The Covid-19 pandemic has given a tremendous boost to online delivery platforms and retail drone technology will see a commercial rollout on a larger scale in the not-too-distant future, Indian-origin researchers have stressed.
The study found that both the number of last-mile warehouses and the delivery speed of the drones will increase as technology matures. In other words, last-mile delivery networks will become more decentralized, with drones operating at increasingly faster speeds.
“It would be reasonable to assume that drone technology is maturing quickly. The Covid-19 pandemic will perhaps hasten this process,” said Dr Milind Dawande, professor of operations management at The University of Texas at Dallas’ Naveen Jindal School of Management.
Hands-free delivery to one’s doorstep will be an advantage drones can offer in the post-Covid era. In the new study, published online in Production and Operations Management, three faculty members from Naveen Jindal School of Management explored how drone delivery could change retail logistics networks.
The analysis showed that while perfect customization of delivery-time guarantees is more profitable, retailers can capture a sizable portion of the profit by partitioning their market into a few zones and offering the best-possible delivery-time guarantee for each zone.
“If a retailer promises each customer a different delivery time based on the customer’s location, that would be perfect customization,” Dawande said… IndiaTV